A most unusual museum is being built deep in the basement of the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Va. It is filled with paintings, sketches, poems and letters.
The collection is varied, but all of the artists share one characteristic: they are all serial killers.
The FBI is bringing in analysts from across the nation to study and analyze the artifacts to see if they can discover clues as to what makes people kill. Called the Evil Minds Research Museum, it contains the clown paintings of John Wayne Gacy who killed 33 boys and young men.
There are sketches by Richard Ramirez who was known as the Night Stalker. He killed 13 people. The Museum also has a manifesto and artwork from Keith Jesperson who murdered 8 people. The collection includes greeting cards and correspondence between the serial killers and their parents.
"We're actually curating this stuff," explained Greg Vecchi, chief of the FBI's Behavior Science Unit. "We have stood up a new new type of research here at the Evil Minds Research Museum. We're looking at serial killers and serial killer artifacts. This is not to glamorize these killers, but to understand them. Our research is all about what we like to say, crawling into the minds of the bad guys."
The FBI has collected serial killer memorabilia from a source that may be as hard to understand as the killers themselves.
"There's a whole group of people out there, call them serial killer groupies for lack of a better term. They are fascinated by these guys and collect anything associated with them," said Vecchi.
One man turned over his entire collection of serial killer memorabilia. The FBI is also appealing to police.
"If you have an evidence room that has personal effects that you no longer need, maybe the guy's been executed or the appeals are done, we'd like you to send us those materials," said Vecchi.
"We have a mechanism for this stuff so first of all it doesn't get out there in the wrong hands," said Vecchi. "This is behind locked doors here at the Behavioral Science Unit. We want to protect the victims. But we also want to understand the offenders. We're going to have scholars come in, artwork experts, handwriting experts, the kinds of things we don't have in the unit to spend a sabbatical with us and dig into some of these artifacts and analyze that for us. Then we will put that into the context of what we already know about the offenders. We're looking at brush strokes. We looking at handwriting analysis to get a better insight into how these folks think."
The Evil Minds research Museum is not open to the public. Only scholars and researchers will be allowed to view the materials to analyze and provide insight into what makes a serial killer.
"These killers are sociopaths. Someone who breaks somebody's neck or they break a pencil, it's the same thing to them. There's no feeling empathy, no feelings of remorse.." said Vecchi.
It's a bizarre mindset which makes no sense to most people. But looking at their artwork and writing may provide insight and understanding that could prove to be the key in getting a confession.
"Factoring that they're going to lie and be deceptive and then how to do these interviews. How do you talk to them, what do you stay away from," said Vecchi.
The FBI believes the collection of shapes and colors they are gathering can somehow paint a better picture of the criminal mind.
